The Early Word: New Books for the Week of May 4, 2009

First Lady, Fashion Icon? Or Pretty in Plaid? Details in new non-fiction!

FICTION

Stone's Fall By Iain Pears

An intricate yet panoramic historical novel with plenty of spy-versus-spy crime capers at its core, Stone’s Fall is Iain Pears in a return to form for the author of the impressive 1998 bestseller An Instance of the Fingerpost. In an erudite, witty, and always enjoyable delving into the world of international espionage, arms dealing, financial dalliances, and other double-dealings of the ever-deceitful, an ex-reporter attends the funeral of an elderly widow. A solicitor approaches him and hands him a packet of papers that were to be delivered to him only after the woman's death. Reading them takes him back to events never forgotten. In 1909, industrialist/arms seller John Stone fell to his death from the window of his study, leaving an inheritance to an unknown daughter. His widow asked the young reporter to find the daughter, setting him on a search that alters his life. Back through time the story goes — London 1909, Paris 1890, Venice 1867 — with surprising disclosures at every turn. The further you read, the more complex this essentially old-fashioned novel is until everything falls together in the final pages of the promising Stone's Fall.

Piercing blues eyes in incisive black and white: Film critic and pop culture historian Shawn Levy paints the Oscar-winning actor in Paul Newman: A Life in definitive detail as an accomplished superstar who achieved his status by playing charming renegades, has-been heroes, and endearing antiheroes in such venerated films as The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Verdict, and Nobody’s Fool. But Newman was also a rarity in Hollywood: the box-office draw who cared about acting as a craft, the sexy leading man known for his long marriage, and the humble celebrity known for his philanthropy – not to mention his political causes, auto racing, and gourmet food business. Levy doesn’t neglect such Newman shortcomings as his drawbacks as a father and a husband. It wasn’t all blue skies, of course. But it was what makes up A Life.

The Architecture of CommunityBy Leon Krier

Pretty in Plaid: A Life, a Witch, and a Wardrobe, Or, the Wonder Years Before the Condescending, Egomanical, Self-Centered Smart Ass Phase By Jen Lancaster